Pre-hurricane season predictions have Louisiana residents, many still recovering from hurricanes of years past, contending with the reality of another brutal storm season.
The 2022 hurricane predictions from the National Oceanic Atmospheric Administration are above-average. The NOAA is predicting 14-21 named storms, of which three to six may be Category 3 or above. The hurricane season started on June 1, and it will end on Nov. 30.
The 2021 hurricane season ended with 21 named storms, although it was only predicted to have 13 to 20. Seven of those storms were hurricanes, and four were major. Hurricane Ida, one of the major hurricanes, resulted in 30 deaths in Louisiana and an estimated $55 million in damages.
Hurricane Ida made landfall on August 29, 2021, hitting many of the same areas that Katrina wrecked 16 years earlier to date. Ida was a Category 4 when it made landfall near Port Fourchon.
Kayla Fruchtnicht, a resident of Montz, Louisiana, stayed down the road with relatives during the storm. She was told “it was raining more inside of our house than outside of our house.” Her metal roof had been ripped off due to the powerful winds. This resulted in a complete loss of their home.
Although she was not at her own home, she and her family still saw Ida’s force.
“They are traumatized from last year,” Fruchtnicht said. “It was really scary being here. And especially the two weeks after that we had no electricity, no water. It was just hard with the kids.”
Fruchtnicht and her family are about to break ground on rebuilding. She said that this season is weighing heavily on her mind. Loan issues and increased material costs have delayed their timeline. She said they do not know what they will do if their home is devastated yet again before they can even finish building.
Residents with damage face many obstacles in the wake of a hurricane. The federal money and resources given to individuals often require extensive documentation of damage and paperwork. The same is true for loans and insurance companies. This leads to long timelines to obtain any financial compensation for losses.
After a hurricane, the prices for building materials skyrocket. Fruchtnicht said they are rebuilding their home at triple the cost they were originally estimated.
Fruchtnicht was not the only one in her area to experience such loss. Many down her street needed new roofs and other repairs. Some residences still have piles of trash from their homes sitting by the curb.
Karen Sterling, another resident of Montz, is further along in her recovery. Sterling needed a new roof, new siding, and internal repairs. She said coming home to the damage was “like a nightmare.” She said she is about 70% of the way done with repairs, and the remaining is inside her home.
Although her home has been fixed structurally, she said that the idea of another bad season brings her a lot of anxiety.
In the wake of a destructive hurricane, many find themselves needing assistance. The government often steps in by declaring states of emergency and by sending the Federal Emergency Management Agency in to assist.
Residents often find help through their communities as well. Volunteer groups such as The Cajun Navy, churches, and neighbors will band together to help each other in many ways.
Craig Colten is a retired professor from LSU that specialized in community resilience. Community resilience describes the ability of a community to mobilize and function again after a disaster.
He said there is a disconnect between the formal and the informal aid provided after a disaster. Colten described the formal programs through the government as “cookie cutter” saying that these programs are designed to be applied on a large scale no matter where something occurs.
“A sugar cane farming community needs different types of assistance than a fishing community,” Colten said. ”A town hit by a hurricane needs different things than a town burned down by a wildfire.”
Colten said these programs would be more successful if they were customized and if they worked with communities to merge the informal and formal.
Fruchtnicht said she thinks the state could have done more for her area. She feels the smaller cities were left out of the conversation and forgotten about.
Residents often end up relying on their communities when the programs run by the government do not work for them. This reliance on community is threatened by constant recurring storms.
Colten said community resilience decreases directly after a disaster, but it will slowly build back up; however, when harsh storms occur year after year, the communities may not be able to rebuild their resilience before it is hurt again. This leads to more drastic decreases and slower returns to normal.
A large factor in the decline of community resilience is departure. When an area loses many of its residents, the community has financial loss and talent loss. This affects many aspects of the community and their ability to recover.
Colten said that the best thing people can do to help their community is to stay plugged in. Residents can create better community networks by being involved in their communities. These networks provide critical aid in times of need.
Fruchtnicht also has a fishing camp in Grand Isle, an area that is usually hit heavily by storms when they make landfall in Louisiana. Her camp did better than many others in the area.
Grand Isle is a thin area of land up against the Gulf of Mexico. Hurricanes loose power as they travel on land, so the area where it makes landfall is often affected the worst. Grand Isle has been wiped out many times before, but they keep rebuilding.
Fruchtnicht said one shop owner told her “We close when people stop coming. We need y’all here so bad.”
The Army Corps of Engineers and Louisiana Coastal Protection and Restoration Authority will partake in a $122 million restoration of Grand Isle after Hurricane Ida.
Colten said the state needs to focus more on moving whole communities together rather than restoration in places that continually get demolished. He said the long-term trends garner safety concerns, and plans for defensive structures will become obsolete due to rising sea levels.
Whether people decide to move or stay, it is clear that the increasing frequency of major hurricanes is taking a massive emotional toll on the residents of Louisiana.